“From our diplomats'
point of view, the aim of the attackers was to physically seize
the embassy building. There are also grounds to believe that they
wanted bloodshed,” Lavrov said.

The leading players in
the attack on Russia’s embassy were “fighters from Azov
Battalion, created and financed by oligarch Igor
Kolomoisky," who was appointed by Kiev authorities as
governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Lavrov said.

“In the conditions in which we (Russia) and Ukraine [have]
lived for the last 20 years, of course there was no question that
the embassy here should meet the same safety requirements as in
Iraq,” Zurabov told NTV channel. “But it looks like now
we will have to reconsider our approach.”

According to Russia’s envoy to Kiev, there were two groups of
“well equipped” young people between 25 and 30 years old
who took no active part in the violence but were “absolutely
ready to storm.”

“They had baseball bats, metal rods, axes. Had they entered
the territory of the embassy, I think we would not have avoided
victims,” he said.

Sergey Lavrov called the
aggression“disgusting,”adding that the violence faced by
Russian diplomats is “good reason”for“our Western
partners”to think
about how Kiev's ruling regime is using“inherited”following the protests at
Independence Square (Maidan) this winter.

As for Ukrainian acting Foreign Minister Andrey Deshchitsa using
the offensive language addressed to Russian President Vladimir
Putin, it was “beyond the bounds of decency,” Lavrov
said, calling the protest outside the embassy
“bacchanalia.”

“[This is] a good reason for our Western partners, who in
every possible way support any steps by Ukraine’s ruling regime,
to think about how this regime is using powers inherited after
Maidan,” Lavrov said.

Speaking about the international community's reaction to the
embassy attack in Kiev, Lavrov said that Russia is
“disappointed” by Western leaders' position on the
violence.

“Western partners assured me and our diplomats that they
condemn the attack. However, when we drafted a certain resolution
to the UNSC, it was Western partners who refused to support
it,” he said.

“They tried to link it with offers to condemn the downing of
a plane in the southeast, with some other things that have no
connection with the main point; diplomatic representatives’
inviolability cannot have any conditions,” Lavrov said,
adding that such an attitude “does not add to the reputation
of the schools of diplomacy in European countries and the
US.”

A third party behind Ukraine’s ‘arrogant intransigence?'

Touching upon the
disagreement on gas prices between Russia and Ukraine, Lavrov
said that he “can’t get rid of the feeling” that there
is a third country that is consulting Kiev “with the aim to
make their position irreconcilable on all issues.”

The foreign minister added that Russia would not like “some
third party” to be behind such “arrogant
irreconcilability.”

Kiev, at the same time, enjoys “impunity” because
Western partners – “at least some of them” – fence them
off.

“This impunity is also shown in the arrogance with which the
Ukrainian government behaves, in particular in negotiations on
gas [supplies], rejecting those sensible compromises which the
Russian side offers and that are understood and supported by the
EU,” Lavrov said. “We are worried that this impunity is
showing up more and more often.”